On the ferry to Tangier I shriek across the sea.Practice how to sound like a real woman. Oldaunties grab my buttocks, smush their breastsagainst my back and sing leleleleleleleleleleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeDon’t cover your mouth habibti! Only womenon the upper deck, only sea. We move tongueslike this to tell the waves stay back, tell men

stay back, tell the dead stay gone, tell runawaywives stay gone. They turn me into wisteriawoman, limbs wrapped around poles and thighsas they guide me. Throw back your head, epiglottisto the breeze. Salt air burns my hot membranes,scratches at the tight knots of my chords.All my life I was told

women must swallow sand unless we are soundinga warning.

﻿Gustave Courbet. The Sea, 1865 or later. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Seema Yasmin is a poet, medical doctor, and journalist from England currently living in California, where she is a John S. Knight Fellow in Journalism at Stanford University. Yasmin’s poems appear in Breakwater Review, The Shallow Ends, Coal Hill Review, Diode, and others.